speaking from WM experience only:
bricking a phone is harder to do with the introduction of a manufacture's bootloader available on the device (which users can access)... however, its usually this bootloader that needs to be altered/hacked to allow for all the custom roms, etc,. a bad bootloader will usually permanently render the device useless.

in regards to android:
from what everyone is saying so far, root access is needed. in which case some sort of exploit needs to be found to do this... sounds like a waiting game

edit: oh and pinch and zoom seems to be totally a software/firmware type of issue. the screen is hardware enabled to do pinch zoom- yes? if so, then once root access is gained this should be a relatively easy patch

Slightly off topic, but if you have a droid and want to show people some multitouch, then install PicSay (free) from the Market. It looks to have been updated with Multitouch and I can pinch zoom in and out of pictures.

Slightly off topic, but if you have a droid and want to show people some multitouch, then install PicSay (free) from the Market. It looks to have been updated with Multitouch and I can pinch zoom in and out of pictures.

Click to expand...

yes, and just as smooth as the iphone's pinch-n-zoom. i bet in the next two days, there will be a browser with it enabled (Steel?)

I don't get what the big deal is... double click is fine and works much better one handed.

Also, I recall a video on Microsoft Surface (years before the iPhone) that features pinch zoom.

As far as the patents, the answer is simple. Google buys Palm (Palm is on it's way to a quick bankruptcy anyway) and in addition to holding all those cool handheld patents, also gets some former Apple UI people and WebOS to further enhance the Android platform.

If you want multi-touch in your browser this is the dev who more than likely will get it done. He has done it for the G1 and the browser is a hell of a lot better than the stock one. Here is the link to his browser for Android (Donut), this is where he will announce when Loccy's Better Browser will be ready for Android 2.0 (Eclair).

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